Recently, I wrote a review of *WHITE HEAT, The Jazz at the Movies Band CD on Film Noir themes. I planned to follow it up with one on their comparable BODY HEAT album. (Especially after I read that Bobby Blake had met his murdered wife at an LA jazz club, where he had gone to listen to his friend Jack Sheldon, featured trumpeter for the Band; in other words, Life imitating Noir!) Unfortunately, I've temporarily misplaced that disc. Anyway, I've turned to Verese Sarabande's SAX AND VIOLENCE (VSD-5562), a rather less satisfactory jazz-take on Classic Film Noir.

I say less satisfactory because the arrangements for SAX AND VIOLENCE seem more perfunctory to me, less varied than the work of The Jazz at the Movies Band. Then, too, the selections mix classic noir and modern noir, making a peculiar choice or two.

As you probably know (or can easily discover by reading my "WHITE HEAT and Jazz: The Bobby Blake Connection), Film Noir is a genre of Hollywood black and white movie created in the early 1940's, which portrayed losers and loners (often private eyes) as ambiguously sympathetic anti-heroes fighting the system. Murder, sexual tension, political corruption, and cynicism were combined in a way seldom seen earlier. The genre was lauded by French critics after World War II, and declared a unique, influential contribution to the Art of Cinema.

Many critics have concluded that Classic Film Noir died with the growth of Television and the increasing popularity of color motion pictures. After a time, however, new adaptations or applications of Film Noir, and homage to the genre, began to appear. These movies might be described as Modern Noir. The existential concepts were the same, but the professions of the anti-hero expanded; disillusionment, ambiguity, paranoia, hopelessness were more intense and complex. And, of course, the films were in (low-keyed) color and often chose to forgo a conventional orchestral score for a variety of musical styles.

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SAX AND VIOLENCE (Music from the Dark Side of the Screen) illustrates all of these factors. Lanny Meyers plays piano and leads the Group, as well as doing the arrangements. Bob Mair is on bass; Ed Smith provides sophisticated drums; Phil Feather and Bob Carr handle clarinet (and the saxes of the Title); Wayne Bergeron and Dennis Farias work with trumpets and flugelhorn; Robert Hioki and Ira Nepus work exercise the slide trombones; Stephanie Mijanovich has a French horn (rarely seen in these groups); Kirstin Fife, Jean Hugo, Susan Mozdichy play violins, while Jane Levy saws the viola and Stephanie Fife the cello. Finally, Farah Alvin provides an ethereal alto soprano on one of the numbers.

We shall call them The Group.

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The CD begins with Bernard Herrmann's Oscar nominated score for TAXI DRIVER (Scorsese, 1976). I think it likely that this moody nightmare of delusion, lost love and political assassination will be judged Scorsese's best work, now he has increasingly reverted to his academic roots, and has begun to repeat himself. Psychotic Vietnam Veteran Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) as urban metaphor for alienated America was sent into the night by Herrmann's jazzy magic. (Herrmann died while working on the sound mix, and the film is dedicated to him.) The reeds of Phil Feather and Bob Carr embroider on that magic with the help of the Group.

The second cut is a not terribly successful attempt to wrap Pino Donaggio's Herrmann-like music in Brian DePalma's neo-noir of not-so-fair-maiden-lost, BODY DOUBLE (1984), around Miklos Rozsa's seminal score for DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944), Billy Wilder's classic take on the Schneider-Judd Murder Case. Too bad, because the idea of entwining one of the first classics of the genre with a Modern Noir homage to Hitchcock is a good one, and sets up a schema for the whole SAX AND VIOLENCE collection.

Phil Feather and Bob Carr (saxophones), Wayne Bergeron and Dennis Farias (trumpets and flugelhorns), Robert Hioki and Ira Nepus (trombones), and Stephenie Mijanovich's French horn all contribute, but to no great avail.

John Barry's score for Larry Kasdan's debut film, BODY HEAT (1981), is recognized as one of the most successful Modern Noir scores. Barry bathes DOUBLE INDEMNITY themes of lust, longing, and avarice in a Bluesy melody as warm and wet as the Gulf waters of Florida, where the story takes place.

The boys in the band give this beautiful melody a 70's Big Band treatment, featuring the trumpets and flugelhorns of Wayne Bergeron and Dennis Farias.

Stephen Frear's wonderfully crooked Modern Noir, THE GRIFTERS (1990), based on a novel by Jim Thompson, demonstrated that the female (particularly Mom) is deadlier than the male (or his chippy girlfriend). It was aided strongly by Elmer Berstein's jaunty score, which owed a lot to the music of Kurt Weil.

The Dennis Farias's muted trumpet and Phil Feather's alto sax, following the beat of Ed Smith's drums, are lightened occasionally by the violin section of Kirstin Fife, Jean Hugo and Susan Mosdichy in an impudent interpretation of Bernstein's theme.

Michael Small's suspenseful music behind Jane Fonda's Oscar winning performance helped make Alan J. Pakkulla KLUTE (1971), a story of a stalked call girl, a success. The movie caught the ambiguous mood of the late 1960's and early 1970's perfectly.

Here, Paul Vapiano's guitar joins Stepanie Mijanovich's French horn in a well-done blues rendition of Small's theme.

THE LONG GOOD-BYE was Robert Altman's 1973 updating of Raymond Chandler's well-regarded detective novel. John William's contributed a clever score which had his theme emanating, a la Orson Welles' instructions for TOUCH OF EVIL (1958), in variations from half a dozen sources (on a car radio, out of a bar juke box, at a funeral, etc).

The group provides a rather less inventive jazz example of Williams' theme.

Jerry Goldsmith's CHINATOWN score is another Modern Noir masterpiece. Roman Polanski realized Writer Robert Towne's intention to have this dark story of a private eye, water and (innocent) femme fatales represent the growth of Los Angeles and its society. Goldsmith's theme is entirely fitting.

The strings (Violins: Kerstin Fife, Jean Hugo, Susan Mosdichy; Viola: Jane Levy; Chelo: Stephanie Fife) transforms Goldsmith's concept into a warm summer wind of jazz.

GUN CRAZY (Joseph H. Lewis, 1949) comes as one of three Classic Noirs in the collection to be given a cut to itself. A low budget variation of the Bonnie and Clyde legend, GUN CRAZY managed, with the help of Victor Young's music, to inject Noir aspects into an essentially country western setting.

Paul Vapiano's guitar and the saxophones of Phil Feather and Bob Carr, backed up by Bob Mair on bass, essay a romantic jazz piece on Victor Young's melody.

Dick Richards' 1975 remake of Raymond Chandler's FAREWELL, MY LOVELY is one of the most memorable of Modern Noirs. Robert Mitchum made Phillip Marlowe the quintessential Private Eye, and the production design encompassed a night world of seedy offices, low dives, unreliable women and thugs of various descriptions. David Shire's score gave such a world soul.

In a blues arrangement of Shire's music, Lanny Meyer's piano and the saxes of Phil Feather and Bob Carr stand out.

THE BLUE DAHLIA (George Marshall, 1946) is better known than GUN CRAZY because it re-united Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. Besides, Raymond Chandler, nearly dead from booze, wrote the existential screenplay (before there was such a philosophy). But both films are connected by the moody music of Victor Young.

The Group does well by Young's theme with basically a piano solo by Lanny Meyers and the snare drums of Ed Smith.

John Boorman's 1967 production of POINT BLANK, based on a novel by Donald Westlake, was an excursion into Modern Noir, which he would remake as PAYBACK over 30 years later. This is a story of a betrayed gunman, his unfaithful wife, her mob boyfriend, and the revenge he exacts. Johnny Mandel, a popular arranger and instrumentalist, turned out a hard charge of music for the movie.

Strangely enough, recalling that Mandel played the trumpet and trombone, a tenor sax solo by Bob Carr leads the group's arrangement of the POINT BLANK score.

Otto Preminger's LAURA (1944) rivals the finest of the Classic Noirs. Based on Vera Caspary's story about investigation a beautiful girl's murder, the film still has power to disquiet and haunt. In addition, David Raksin composed one of the best film scores ever, and the heroine's theme, with words by Johnny Mercer, became a popular standard as "Laura."

Unfortunate then it is that, in my opinion, the attempt by the Group to make Salsa of "Laura," with Ed Smith's bongo drums, and Feather or Carr(I'm not sure which) on tenor sax, is a sorry failure.

More successful is the Group's adaptation of Maurice Jarre's scoring for FATAL ATTRACTION (1987). Adrian Lyne's grand guignol vision of the wages of adultery is not one of my favorite movies, and I have no memory of the score, but Lanny Meyers is able to do something with it.

Entirely appropriately, the Group makes this sexual parable into a pounding piece of jazz bolero. Ed Smith's bongo's and the tenor sax if Phil Feather come to the fore once again.

Finally, we have an example of French Modern Noir, which (wouldn't you know it?) mixes Opera and gangsters with a music tape boot-legging mailman, in Jean-Jacques Beineix's DIVA (1982). The score is by Vlad Cosma, and it is not very distinguished.

The Group give their jazz variation on the music an operatic feel by stressing Lanny Meyers' piano and the strings of Kirsten and Stephanie Fife, Jean Hugo, Susan Mosdichy, and Jane Levy.

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You may notice that, unlike in my review of WHITE HEAT, I have not included the running times for the cuts, nor have I been sometimes sure of the instrumentation of the Group on certain numbers. This failing is caused because Mystery Novelist Dick Lochte does not include that information in his notes. The total musical content amounts to a little over 58 minutes.

It is one other item of evidence to support my surmise that SAX AND VIOLENCE is a slap-dash undertaking. You can do better in this field of music.


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To read Macresarf1's Epinions of other titles mentioned in this review, copy and paste to your browser the following URL's:

BODY HEAT (The Movie) --

http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-149D-8312F4B-38A634EA-prod5

BODY HEAT (Jazz CD) --

http://www.epinions.com/content_27715800708

"WHITE HEAT and Jazz: The Bobby Blake Connection" --

http://www.epinions.com/content_22072168068

CHINATOWN --

http://www.epinions.com/content_172E-12DE7EC9-38F8EF67-prod3

















Recommended: No

Great Music to Play While: Driving